To think that people who agree with VAT on private school fees but not on university fees, are hypocrites?

[Blanket601]

If Labour add VAT to private school fees, they should also add VAT to university fees. Or no VAT on either. The principle and rule, should be the same.

Why is only private school education being platformed. I think we all know why.

I think you are completely wrong (sorry).

Private school holds some advantage with smaller classes etc but the biggest advantage is nice, well brought up children with academically motivated parents concentrated together. The behaviour and expectations are vastly higher than state school. Children stay children longer as there is less culture of the street wise.

At the end of the day, they would be at an advantage anyway over Tyler-Lee on the council estate. The children that are read to, fed proper food, that travel, play instruments, have a 2.4 children married parent family, someone to sit and do homework with them, probably living in a nice house in a low crime area. The main difference is that those children are gathered together at private school, with good sports and music, no disruptive classmates and nice facilities.

Let's raise our expectations on state school children and continue to let the people that want to pay for a service (education) pay for it. The same way I can buy a nicer car/ house/ holiday/ healthcare if I have the money. People work hard to be able to send children to fee paying schools, let them be. I find it really frustrating that people want to remove privilege. Perhaps we should stop people reading to their children too as that's the biggest predictor of success? Let's all walk as slow as our slowest walker.

The vast majority of state ed kids are polite, their parent do do homework with them but what they lack is sufficient teachers, decent sport and music facilities, even proper food!

What you and others want is to avoid any form of tax on your privilege, Labours plans wont close private schools, they will just help level up state schools with a small amount of extra funding.

But as usual, the wealthy just want to hang on to every penny they ve got.

Gotta keep saying it. State schools don't grow on trees. Every private school place contributes tax revenue 10x the value of the "tax exemption", and 3-4x the cost of a state school place.

Not a privilege. Privilege is a "special arrangement". Anyone is welcome to pay the walloping taxes required to go to private school, rather than taking up free taxpayer-funded education.

Sending children to private school, and employing large numbers of teachers and support staff, is an odd way to "hang on to every penny". If you want to "hang on to every penny" you buy a catchment area house and get your education for free paid for by taxpayers.

"Anyone is welcome to pay the walloping taxes required to go to private school"

Such posts make my toes curl. How many times do some posters have to be told that most people cannot afford private school fees! It is categorically not a choice for most and therefore it is very much a privilege. How are you "hanging on to every penny" if you are buying a catchment area house? You are spending vast amounts indeed to buy into some catchments, although you could argue that it is a much more sensible investment as it has a direct ROI. There are stamp duties to be paid on such properties too, so hardly holding on to every penny.

Sorry, but how exactly are you paying "walloping taxes" to send your kids to private schools? The whole point of this thread is that private education is not currently taxed but soon will be?

Are you complaining about the tax that you pay on your high income? Because that doesn't actually have anything to do with your choice of school.

You don't pay taxes to send your kids to private school.

& most private school parents wont be on PAYE so will be avoiding the higher rates of tax on earned income.

Even a family on an PAYE income of 100k p.a and 2/3 children would really struggle to afford private education in most of England.

1. When you choose private school you forgo an average £7.5k free taxpayer-funded education
2. Private schools contribute around double the tax of state schools - from payroll, VATable supplies, and downstream economy
3. To pay school fees you have to work harder than you otherwise might. We go over this again and again. High incomes don't happen by accident. If my family wasn't paying school fees either Mrs Chips or I would quit work, immediately.
4. When you say "private education isn't taxed", you may not be aware that private schools pay VAT on expenditure, while state schools don't.

Here's the actual comparison between the taxpayer cost of state schools and tax contribution of private schools, per pupil. Source here. The £30k differential, per pupil, is the "walloping taxes" I referred to.

I never said most people can afford fees. I said anyone is welcome to do so. There are no special arrangements, privileges (literally: private laws) that stop you from doing so.

"this is expensive" isn't the same as "this is a privilege".

Newspeak, "lockdown liberals" and "privilege"; parents have nothing to feel guilty about (substack.com)

The irony of the juxtaposition of these two comments in the same post

"At the end of the day, they would be at an advantage anyway over Tyler-Lee on the council estate."

"the biggest advantage is nice, well brought up children with academically motivated parents concentrated together. The behaviour and expectations are vastly higher than state school."

It might be noteworthy that parents' manners, values and behaviour shapes children much more than any school environment.

...which is an extremely good reason not to get so cross about private schools. Children with, as you say, decent families do perfectly well in both state and private schools. Good schools and good families are great, there is no reason to do anything that harms good schools and good families.

Where did I say I was cross about private schools?!

The issue I have is not with the schools but with posts that evidence people living in bubbles and echo chambers and not realising that they have bought into a system that is NOT financially accessible to most people. Surely that is very, very basic economics.

Definition of privilege by Cambridge dictionary -
an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich.

You concur that children with decent families do perfectly well in both state and private schools. So why would it be so negative for you to potentially having to take your DC out of private education when VAT kicks in?

Disclaimer: I am a very high earner and my DC have had an excellent education so no "politics of envy" (or other tropes) here.

I don't think I did say you are cross about private schools. Many people are though, and it's evident that's the main reason they want to harm them by increasing financial stress.

Privilege: here, as I said, private arrangements, "private law". I'd be interested to know where the Cambridge picked up this modern meaning. But perhaps we can't use language any more, so let's agree it's "something some people can afford and others can't" which is rather a mouthful. The economic reality remains, it's astonishingly positive for the public finances and for society when people choose private school.

I wish there were more independent schools such as IGS Durham (fees: £4.5k a year); however the majority of independent schools charge more like £12-15k a year. It's worth thinking about how many households could afford that out of lifetime income, if that didn't mean they'd be paying for education twice like private school families do today.

"You concur that children with decent families do perfectly well in both state and private schools. So why would it be so negative for you to potentially having to take your DC out of private education when VAT kicks in?" From society's point of view, it's extremely negative because that results in a helluva hit to public finances. See bar chart above. From our point of view, local state schools are complete rubbish and the school day doesn't fit with our life/workload.

Read the research. People pay a lot for private school fees because it gives significant advantages.
And the usual guff that it is about children being well brought up and well behaved. IME respectable working class kids are much better behaved than those from wealthy families. It does not help them.

Maybe we should just scrap private schools 🤣

Independent schools charging £12-15k per year! Not in my world. Years 10-13 outside London in a non big name day school £10,000 per term. Out of the reach of most of the population, of course.

Private school families do not make any more of a contribution to state schools than childless people. Should they get a refund too?

I didn't ask about society's views. I asked for yours. Why not just pay a fortune to move to a good catchment and "hang on to every penny'? Problem solved.

Of course. This is the answer but no party is brave enough to do it.

People who can already afford £30k+ pa can most likely afford any increase on frees due to VAT (which won't automatically be +20% ontop)

I think people don't realise just how ridiculously wealthy the top earners are. There's only going to be a tiny percentage pushed out of inde schools.

Cost to taxpayer several tens of billion. ~£3.5bn in unfunded state school places. Tens of billions Loss of taxes if/when feepayers cut back on work, and from the taxable economic value add of the indepedent school industry. Colossal maintenance bill on taking over listed building liabilities.

And that's assuming you just steal the assets rather than paying for them.

The VAT hasn't been thought through. But your scheme REALLY hasn't been thought through.

This thread just keeps on giving - 'children stay children longer in private schools', not around here they don't! Where do you get this stuff from?

Exactly. IMO the impact will be a storm in a teacup. The most likely scenario is that there will be very minimal displacement and any displacement will occur over a broad time period which will further dilute its impact.

I just find it grating when people who are already in a very privileged position (yes privileged) to be able to buy into private education in the first place are talking about the hardship of it all. This is not hardship. It is a case of either paying the VAT or bailing if private education is no longer a privilege that you can afford. It is what it is.

But there’s a lot of people paying significantly less than £30k per year. I pay £14,600, which is slightly more than I was paying for day nursery ten years ago and less than that day nursery charges now. Yes, there are some rich people at my DC’s school but there are also a lot of familes with both parents working in fairly well paid (but not megabucks) jobs. I have two close friends with kids in different private schools to my DC’s. One is a social worker and the other is a teacher.

Data is from ISC. Mean fees are £16.7k; that includes outliers like Eton (c £50k) and also specialist SEN (£75-100k). Hence both mode and median are £12-15k.

"Private school families do not make any more of a contribution to state schools than childless people. Should they get a refund too?" You're assuming childless people do the same work/ pay same tax as private school families. The work incentives are different - private school families work because they need school fees. Work, income and taxes don't arise by accident. You're also ignoring the positive externality / social benefit of education which is the ONLY reason the state is involved at all. Finally you're ignoring the tax contribution of the sector itself. The point about childless families is an argument (which I don't agree with) for no state involvement in education at all.

"I didn't ask about society's views. I asked for yours. Why not just pay a fortune to move to a good catchment and "hang on to every penny'? Problem solved. We've made decisions already that are hard to unmake. House, work, friendships. I've no problem with a good catchment state school, I do have a problem with the disruption of my children's education. I understand that's just "meh" for people. In any case, in that scenario I still end up paying heaps less tax than I do today, and also displacing a kid from the good school into a less good school.

"I think people don't realise just how ridiculously wealthy the top earners are. There's only going to be a tiny percentage pushed out of inde schools." @wubwubwub do you think it's logically consistent to say "private school is ludicrously unaffordable" and at the same time "private school families are ludicrously wealthy / have so much spare money they won't notice"? Given we're talking 6.5% of children overall, and IIRC about 15% in sixth form, what do you think the representative income is for private school families?

But that analysis was undertaken by the Adam Smith Institute - it is hardly an unbiased source!

There are some really odd assumptions in your post. Firstly, that private school parents are all working/earning more than they would otherwise simply in order to pay school fees. This might be true for some, but it certainly doesn't apply to the majority of high achievers. And lots of people work incredibly hard despite not earning a lot.

You are not paying tax to send your children to private schools. You are paying tax on your high income. Same as the many high earners who choose not to send their kids to private schools/ don't have kids etc. The fact that you choose to spend some of your taxed income on private schools fees is irrelevant.

Likewise, the taxes arising from the staff payrolls at these schools are nothing to do with you. You pay fees in exchange for a service. Your children benefit from that service. You are not paying the taxes of the staff who provide that service.

And yes, of course there is a net cost to the taxpayer from providing state education. That is how public services work.

No, not privileged, just working bloody hard and paying a disproportionate share of tax to pay for state schools for everyone else.

You're saying: private school families should stop busting ourselves to earn (say) £100-150k to pay school fees and live an otherwise somewhat stingy lifestyle with lots of stress; instead earn £50-80k with loads more leisure (ditch the second income? go part-time?) and send the kids to state school, demanding an unfunded and possibly non-existent place.

Because the country doesn't need people working extra hard and paying lots of tax; the country instead needs more people demanding public services on more typical incomes?

You guys just haven't thought this through. As far as state schools are concerned, the existence of private education is the golden goose.

Quit work if you want to. As long as you are not going to try and claim benefits no one cares if you work or not. Your choice.